360 Camera News and Info

UPDATED: Panono high resolution 360 camera has a new owner; will emerge from bankruptcy

Panono 108-megapixel 360 camera
Panono 108-megapixel 360 camera

Panono has found a new investor and is expected to emerge from bankruptcy. UPDATE: here is the official press release.

Panono is a 108-megapixel 360 camera, the highest resolution 360 camera in production to date.  It earned an excellent reputation for its image quality (and it’s my favorite 360 camera for use outdoors), but as a business, it was not thriving, partly because of the high cost of the camera (currently around $2,000).   Two months ago, Panono filed for bankruptcy reorganization.

Now, as reported in Golem.de, Panono has found a new investor, who will be able to take the company out of bankruptcy.  The new investor will make an announcement at the end of July.

According to Golem.de, during the insolvency, the bankruptcy administrator was actually able to operate Panono at a profit (or at least break even), which showed that their product was viable.

Panono’s assets will now be acquired by a new company, allowing it to start with a clean slate.  The new company will hire all of Panono’s existing 22 employees, but Panono founder Jonas Pfeil will not be involved in the new company in any capacity.

Panono’s existing liabilities will not be transferred to the new company.  This means crowdfunding backers will have no recourse against the new company.  This is sad for backers but was very much expected, as I discussed in my post. For existing users and those interested in the Panono, this is great news because it likely means that Panono’s cloud stitching service will continue, at least for now.

UPDATE: according to the official press release, notwithstanding the fact that the new company has no liability to the backers, the new owner will attempt to find a solution for them:

Finally, while all legal liabilities remain with the old Panono GmbH and its management, we as Professional360 GmbH feel morally obliged to find a solution that all early supporters of the Panono technology will be able to enjoy the camera as soon as possible after so many years of waiting. We are working on this and will release new information on this topic shortly.

I will post as soon as I receive their next announcement about this.

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Mic Ty

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    • Yes! I don’t understand some of the other sites making it sound like this is the death knell for panono. On the contrary, it’s rising from the ashes!

    • Yes that’s really the thing that’s holding it back I think. Maybe the new owner can find a more efficient way to produce it or invest in production of larger volumes.

      • Got to agree – I actually got mine on Ebay so I think that paying ~$1000 for the camera, and all the accessories was a fair price. I think the product via firmware also has plenty of untapped potential and while stitching was ok to do offline (with their UPF tool and autopano) it would be nice to have RAW as well as just JPG. Good news all round frankly.